


All Smiles

by StarlightSkies



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: By the way I'm making the bold assumption that Hermann went to a preppy English private school, Domestic Fluff, Fix-It, Ghost Drifting, I think I tag everything with that now, Idiots in Love, Implied bullying (past), Insecure Hermann, M/M, Post-Movie: Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018), Prolonged and probably unnecessary fluff, Really just an excuse for me to write more happy Newmann content, Since it's basically canon anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-18
Updated: 2018-07-18
Packaged: 2019-06-12 07:32:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15334947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarlightSkies/pseuds/StarlightSkies
Summary: Hermann has been attracting a lot more attention around the 'dome. He wants to know why.Post-Uprising oneshot. Written, like most of my gratuitously sappy Newmann content, for the wonderful parvusmundus on tumblr who inspires me to no end.





	All Smiles

It all starts one particularly fine morning when Hermann notices a J-Tech girl looking at him with a peculiar expression. He narrows his eyes, slowing his step, and manages a kind of quizzical helpless look (he thinks) before she squeaks, averts her eyes, and scurries away around the corner.

What on _Earth_?

He limps as quickly as he can back to the lab and sets his coffee down, peering into the pane of glass above his desk at his reflection. It stares back at him and he sees nothing amiss. He traces the lines around his eyes, mouth, forehead. Maybe a bit less severe than they had been for the previous ten years, but surely nothing for a J-Tech underling to gawk at. Hermann decides to think no more of it, and to return to his calculations. 

That is, until it keeps happening.

He keeps himself busy in the lab for most of the morning, but around lunchtime when he feels himself getting peckish, he heads to the canteen for what he is positive will be a peaceful, if brief, lunch. To his surprise, though, the incident from that morning repeats itself. He feels the smile fade from his expression as the whispers and flashes of grins around him are swiftly concealed when their owners take note of his presence. With a scowl that would have made his thirty-five year old self proud, he thanks the server behind the counter stiffly, takes his tray, and stalks off to find an isolated table somewhere with as much grace as he can manage.

That afternoon during the weekly briefing (still being run by Lambert while the position of Marshal is beaten to death by bureaucracy), it happens again. At least, Hermann thinks as he settles at the conference table, among the higher-ups he is relatively safe. He may not be friends with all of them, but he is reasonably sure that they all respect him at the very least in a professional manner.

That is, of course, until he catches Jules watching him placidly, her lips quirked in a half-smile, which she quickly schools off of her face the moment she catches Hermann looking her way. She glances back up at him once more, unable to keep it hidden for good, but then shuffles the stack of papers in front of her and clears her throat to give Lambert the report on that week’s J-Tech sector finances.

A bizarre mixture of emotions torments Hermann for the rest of the briefing, and he barely manages to get through his K-Sci division report without a mad dash back to the safety of the lab. He does manage to get away as soon as the meeting ends – until Jake catches up with him fifty yards down the corridor, cornering him by a dilapidated broom cupboard.

They trade glances. A beat. “Dr. Gottlieb. Are you okay?”

The question catches Hermann slightly off-guard, and he frowns.

“Do I seem…not okay?” He resists the urge to loosen his collar, feeling bizarrely like Newton for a brief moment.

“Well. It’s just that –” Jake frowns, looking him up and down carefully. “I dunno, man. Maybe it’s me. But you know that you could tell me, yeah? If something were wrong?”

His concern is evidently genuine, and Hermann feels slightly bad for trying so hard to escape.

“I appreciate the trouble, Jake, but I’m fine. Thank you,” Hermann adds calmly, hoping fervently that he hasn’t betrayed just how horribly his insides feel as if they’re being fed to a Kaiju.

“Whatever you say. Oh, and – say hi to Newt for me,” Jake says, giving him a quick smile before jogging back the way they came.

\---

“So, let me get this straight. You’re confused…because people have been _smiling_ at you?” Newt’s analysis of the situation is just as beautifully obtuse as Hermann hadn’t hoped for, and he exhales slowly.

He stands disgruntled at the kitchen table while Newt sits opposite him, one hand propped against his chin in thoughtful 

“Yes, Newton, thank you for your eloquence. And I have no idea why. Not a clue.” Hermann throws one hand up, the other gripping his cane slightly too tight for comfort.

“I think you’re overreacting a little. I’m serious,” he adds, catching sight of Hermann’s expression, which is probably something along the lines of disbelief. Hermann grimaces, and looks away. “You’ve saved the world. Like, saved it twice. Hell, last time you kicked an angry hivemind ass out of my brain. I don’t see any reason why anyone would laugh at you for it. That’s not what this is.” 

He understands Hermann’s misgivings all too well, and they both know it. Hermann sighs.

Newt, evidently sensing that his reassurance is less than sufficient, swings himself off the bar stool and comes around the island to stand in front of him, taking Hermann’s free hand in his own.

Hermann sighs quietly, and feels Newt’s thumb brush the back of his hand. “Maybe it is me. It’s just – you know I can’t read people. I never could.” Newt laughs quietly in agreement, but there is no malice. If Hermann could have read him better, perhaps they wouldn’t have been bumbling about their feelings for the better part of two decades. “I just can’t help but think the worst, even after all this time.”

Newt’s skin is slightly dry and his stubble coarse against Hermann’s cheek as he presses a kiss to it. Hermann knows he sees the same flashes of the drift that echo in his own mind, feels their muscles twitch and their breathing sync as they experience the scenes in slow motion: Hermann alone, standing tall in front of his classmates with pride in his eyes and an ache in his chest as his brain yet again outperforms all of them. The smiles mock him, jeering and cold, intimidated by the boy they don’t understand. He knows Newt understands painfully well, better than perhaps anyone else.

Newt shifts. “Hey,” he says, interrupting the memory, pulling Hermann back to the present. “ _Hey_. It’s not like that anymore. You know it’s not.”

“Yes, but –”

“But _nothing_ , Hermann.” The hand not covering Hermann’s finds his hair instead, and idle fingers comb through the undercut soothingly. “Maybe it was like that once, but you’re not the same person you were then – and, like, those idiots were absolute garbage anyway. My point is,” he says finally, pulling back and looking Hermann in the eye, the old manic glint reappearing as it had done over the last several months with increasing frequency. “My point is that you’re Hermann fucking Gottlieb, and if anyone has a problem with that, they can take it up with me. I mean, after you’re through with them.”

That earns a laugh from Hermann. Newt had said that one of his most vivid memories from the “possession period,” as he called it, was Hermann’s thorough and complete laying to waste of the Shao elevator guards.

“Whatever this is, it’s not what you think,” he says firmly, conviction (as always) so concrete that Hermann is afraid sometimes he might run head-long into it. “Whatever it is, it’s probably something good.” He punctuates the statement by pulling Hermann down to kiss him, effectively ending the discussion for at least the next half hour.

That night, though, Hermann lies awake, one arm around Newt, who is curled against his side. By all accounts, he thinks, he should be so insufferably, suffocatingly happy with the current situation that he can live the rest of his life in peace with the man he fell in love with decades ago and _finally_ has back within reach.

Still, as Newt frequently reminds him, it’s his official job in their relationship to worry. Hermann worries enough for both of them, plus probably two more of them put together. The drift had changed a lot, but perhaps not that much. Maybe Newt was right, and his imagination was overreacting. Many of the PPDC members stationed at the shatterdome he considered good acquaintances, if not friends; being (un)officially in charge of K-Sci had its benefits, he had discovered, as did ending up with many of Newton’s more outgoing traits.

Yes, maybe he was worrying too much. It couldn’t possibly be all that bad.

\---

A week comes and goes, and Hermann is still no closer to solving this idiotic, nightmarish riddle than he had been a week prior.

The smiles had become less frequent as his mood had soured, and that morning was no exception. They hadn’t stopped, though, and Hermann’s coffee mug clinks dismally as he sets it down on his desk, probably a bit too hard. It does the trick and startles the two female cadets lingering outside his window. They don’t get the hint though, still peering curiously inside, and he stands suddenly.

“Well, what are you bloody well looking at? Get on with you!” he barks, and they titter nervously and scurry in the opposite direction. There comes a low whistle from the doorframe, and Hermann rounds on the figure standing in the doorframe, practically ready to upend his desk, but is startled to find Jake.

“Something you want to talk about?” he jerks his chin toward the window, indicating the two girls who had left, and Hermann sighs deeply, running a hand through his hair. He moves to sit down, but Jake shakes his head and gestures out the door. “How about we take a walk? I kinda want to get out of this stuffy place for a bit.”

They end up on the shatterdome deck, which has calmed down since the crisis with Newt and Raijin nearly a year ago. There are a few squads of rangers doing their daily exercises, some cadets here and there working on their assigned tasks. All in all, it is the very picture of normalcy the PPDC could hope for, even with the Kaiju threat still brewing somewhere, off in a distant universe. 

“You know, I’m still not used to all of this,” Jake says, folding his arms and surveying the deck. “Maybe it’s just me being paranoid, but I keep expecting one of those stupid bastards to pop up out of the sea any day. But people have a right to be happy, I guess.”

Hermann says nothing for a while, listening to the waves break against the metal several stories beneath their feet and watching the rangers perspire in the strong sunlight, which glints off of the Jaegers housed nearby. J-Tech had done wonders since the last attack, like they always had during the war; apart from normal wear and tear, it was difficult to tell that they had been ripped to shreds in Shinjuku.

Jake lets out a long breath after a while, and turns to Hermann. “So, what’s this trouble I’ve been hearing you’ve had? I know you, Gottlieb, and you’d have filed a complaint by now if it was anything serious.”

“I suppose I would, wouldn’t I? I don’t know,” Hermann muses, shifting slightly so that he can rest more of his weight against his cane. “Perhaps I would have a decade ago. Maybe it’s me getting older, and maybe it’s Newton – or both – but the urge hasn’t possessed me. Yet,” he says, unable to help the small smile that overtakes one corner of his mouth. He sobers, though, and feels his brow crease once more. “I just want to know if – why people are, well – is it me they’re acting strangely toward? Something I’ve done?”

“Depends how you define strange, I guess. All I’ve seen is you attracting a lot more smiles than you did before. Is that too weird for you?”

“It’s not a _problem_ per se,” Hermann elaborates, and can’t help but put a hand to his mouth pensively. “I’d just like to know why everyone seems so…you know,” he gestures helplessly, unable to pinpoint the feeling exactly. “It’s just that the last time people looked at me that way, they saw someone – well, someone who was a target. Someone to be laughed at.” He can hear his voice growing quieter with each syllable.

Jake, however, shakes his head. 

“People here respect you too much for that. I don’t want to make light of it or anything, yeah? But I’m not sure how I can convince you that they’re just happy. They’re happy _you’re_ happy, Doc.” He glances at Hermann, as if to make sure the point is sinking in, before looking back out toward the sea. “Fact is, no one’s seen you smile this much in…well, probably ever, as long as you’ve been stationed here.”

Thinking back several weeks, the truth of the matter is startlingly obvious to Hermann. He had been in a particularly good mood since Newt had gotten the go-ahead from the PPDC to move in with him. And he had been caught humming something (probably by one of Newt’s infernal bands) by his lab assistant a few days before this entire charade had started. 

“It’s just been so long since there was anything to be happy about, it feels strange,” Hermann thinks aloud, and feels a slight flush creep its way up his neck, but to his surprise Jake gives a noise of agreement.

“It wasn’t until Nate and I sorted things out that I realized how long it had been since I was happy. Really, _genuinely_ happy. It’s weird how it creeps up on you,” he says, before clapping Hermann on the shoulder. “Well Doc, good talk but I think I’ve got some cadets to go mess with.” He starts to move away, but glances over his shoulder and adds, “Don’t frown too much, or those lines might be permanent.”

For once, Hermann can’t help but laugh.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I'll probably add tags as they come to me. If you'd like anything tagged, as always, let me know.


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